Attendance at dam removal hearing urged  

July 8, 2010

   “Klamath will be the big event,” said Karl Scronce, an Upper Klamath Water Users Association board member and wheat farmer. “Opposition to the restoration   agreement and settlement are encouraging people to attend, and we are, too. We just want people to voice their honest concerns about this.”

   The meeting, from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Klamath County Fairgrounds, is one of seven required by the National Environmental Policy Act. The comments will be included in a report that informs the Secretary of the Interior how to proceed with the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement.     

   The KHSA is an agreement between PacifiCorp and the federal government rooted in a relicensing proceeding.

   According to the agreement, the company would add a surcharge to customers’ bills to remove the dams, which proponents argue would improve fish passage and water quality.

   Members of local water groups said their comments will be related largely to the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement, which is different from the dam agreement, but the two are considered by government officials as “non-severable.”  

   In the KHSA, PacifiCorp specifically separates itself from the KBRA.

   The KBRA aims to establish sustainable water supplies and affordable power rates for irrigators, help the Klamath Tribes acquire a 92,000 -acre parcel of private timberland, and fund habitat restoration and economic development throughout the region.

   Speak up … again

   Tom Mallams, a hay farmer in the Upper Basin and president of the Klamath Off-Project Water Users Association, said he’ll go to this meeting and say what he’s said at innumerable others: the KBRA and removing the dams are a bad idea.

   But, he said, hedoesn’t know if it will do any good.

   “I don’t know what they do with the comments they get,” Mallams said. “My personal feeling is they’re going to keep doing these things, keep doing these studies, until they get what they want, and that is that people will stop showing up and they’ll do what they want.”  

   Regardless, he said people should “absolutely” show up.

   “Every voting citizen, everybody should be there, whether you’re for it or against it,” Mallams said. “If you don’t voice your opinion, you have no place to complain about what happens.”

   Oregon state Sen. Doug Whitsett, a Republican who represents Klamath County, will be at the meeting with his entire staff, prepared to submit written and oral comments.

   “We have an agency here that is imposing unrealistic demands on a community. They’re imposing regulations that have little if any chance to improve water quality,” Whitsett said. “It’s an exercise in futility that will cost the community huge sums of money and drive people out of the Basin.”